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A Brief History Lesson

A Unix "shell" is a command-line interpreter that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems.

  • There are a bunch of different shells... Bourne shell, C shell, Korn shell, Z shell, etc.
  • The first major shell was the Bourne Shell, developed in the late 70's.
  • We're going to focus on the "Bourne again shell" or Bash (default shell for OSX and Linux)

Hint: You can install Bash bindings in Windows via Git for Windows

Why Bash?

  • A fully-capable scripting language
  • Vast adoption (approximately 70% of public servers are Unix or Unix-like)
  • Tons of command line features...
    • Tab completion
    • Pipes
    • Aliases
    • Environment variables
    • Startup scripts
    • ...and more!

Essential Commands

In this next part, we'll learn some basic commands that we can use to interact with our Bash shell.

The outline below is provided as a handy reference of the commands we'll cover in class. This tutorial contains alot of additional information if you're confused or just curious.  

Navigation

pwd - Display your "present working directory".

ls - Display the contents of a directory specified by <path>.

Optional Flags:
Long listing (with details)... ls -l
List all files... ls -a

Optional Arguments:
Apply to files or directories... ls <path>

Hint:
You can use the wildcard character too... ls *.txt

cd - Change to directory specified by <path>

Optional Arguments:
The location to move to... cd <path>

Special Characters:
Move to the parent directory... cd ..
Return to previous working directory... cd -
Root of filesystem... cd /
Your home directory... cd ~ or cd --

curl - Download a file.

Required Arguments:
File url... curl -O <url>

Hint:
Try executing this... curl -O https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/giteveryday.txt

cat - Concatenate and print files

Required Arguments:
The file to concatenate... cat <file>

Hint:
Path multiple paths to concatenate files... cat <file> <file>

Special Characters:
Send output to a new file... cat file1.txt file2.txt > combined.txt
Wildcards... cat *.txt > all-the-files.txt

head - Show the first ten lines of a file.

Required Arguments:
The file to display... head <file>

Optional Flags:
Specify n lines... head -n 25 <file>

tail - Show the last ten lines of a file.

Required Arguments:
The file to display... tail <file>

Optional Flags:
Specify n lines... tail -n 25 <file>

Changing Things

mkdir - Make a new directory.

Required Arguments:
The name of the new directory... mkdir <name>

Optional Flags:
Create intermediate directories as required. ... mkdir -p <path>

mv - Move (or rename) a file or directory

Required Arguments:
The target and destination... mv <target> <destination>

cp - Copy a file or directory

Required Arguments:
The target and destination... cp <target> <destination>

Optional flags:
Copy recursively (directories)... cp -R

rm - Remove files and directories

Required Arguments:
The file or directory to remove... rm <path>

Optional Flags:
Remove recursively (directories)... rm -r

open - View directory or file specified by <path>.

Required Arguments:
Directory or file... open <path>

Special Characters:
A dot character refers to the current directory... open .

Note For Windows Users...
Use this command instead... explorer .

man - Display documentation for a given command. "Man" is short for "manual".

Required Arguments:
The command to display documentation for... man <command>

Hints:
Exit a man page by pressing the 'q' key on your keyboard.

Note For Windows Users...
Use this command instead... help or --help

history - Show command history

Special Characters:
Recall previous command... !!
Repeat command in your history... !<linenumber>